I’ve got one ticket to the the West of West Wine Festival’s Grand Tasting on Saturday, August 6th from 3:00-6:00 pm in Occidental, CA – a $125 value, which we’re giving away to one lucky randomly-selected commenter! The giveaway also includes free access to the Barrel Tastings & Open Houses on Sunday, August 7th (details to be provided in the Grand Tasting).

The skinny: YOU leave a comment on this post, letting us know your fave Sonoma wine recommendation (in keeping with the theme, Coastal recommendations are preferable but let’s keep it open to all of Sonoma). At 8PM ET on Wednesday, July 20 I will randomly select a winner from the commenters, who will be notified via e-mail.Easier than suckin’ down a chilled Sonoma Coast Chard on a hot Summer night. So get crackin’, peeps!

The fine-print: This ticket admits one person to the above-described Grand Tasting event on August 6th and includes free access to the event’s Barrel Tastings & Open Houses on August 7th. No travel, meals, accommodations, “escorts,” hovercraft (though that would be awesome, wouldn’t it?), monkeys (also awesome) or anything else provided.

What has been exploding, however, is the volume of mobile-related wine content in recent weeks (see my recent take on VinPass, and another story posting here later this week on iPad wine mags), so today’s giveaway feels timely (to me, anyway). It also, in turn, makes me feel increasingly older and out-of-date with the mobile scene, since I don’t own an iPhone, a Droid device, or an iPad (hey, Apple: potential sponsorship opportunity here, people!) and therefore have had to request screen prints from the mobile apps that carry my reviews to approve anything they do with my content, since I can’t view the stuff in its native format. I know… I suck… Whatever.

You know the drill: you comment, and in one week I randomly select winners from the commenters! There will be three winners, each receiving one promo code each for a copy of Pocket Wine. Disclaimer: I’m giving away promo codes (here’s how to redeem them in the Apple App Store if you’re one of the lucky winners), not devices – and if you’re a winner you have to redeem your promo code by June 13th (or it turns back into a pumpkin… or at least stops working).

So our topic for the comments: How do you feel about the plethora of mobile wine apps? Handy tools? Or just crapware taking up your precious mobile phone memory? Got any faves? Shout it out for a chance to win!

This week, we’re going to look at the three that did make that cut, with my explanations as to why I chose them, exactly as I reported them to the folks running the GD awards this year. They’re listed after the jump in descending order, ending with my personal #1 pick for the award. The official winner will be announced next week at Duboeuf’s annual Beaujolais Crus preview in New York on May 24.

Same drill as last week, people: you comment, and in one week I’ll randomly select a winner from the list of commenters!

You can see exactly where Mark’s latest release fell in my top three after the jump (for more on Mark, check out the interview I did with him back in October) – to make a long story short, his latest book kicks all kinds of wine learning ass. The main reason I picked Brave New World of Wineas one of my three finalists, however, was because Mark’s book reminds us of something that I think we spend too much tome forgetting – inherently, wine is supposed to make us happy; it’s supposed to bring joy, delight and (at the high end) some artistic measure to our days.

Do we miss the trick too much, and too often forget about the joy that wine is supposed to bring to us? Shout it out in the comments for a chance to win!

For the next act in my continuing saga as judge in the Georges Duboeuf Wine Book of the Year Awards, I wanted to detail the awards finalists that didn’t make the cut for my top three candidates for this year’s award (the three is not an arbitrary number, by the way – as judges, we were asked to pick our top three selections for the award from the seven finalists chosen by the event’s organizers).

Most of you know the drill: you comment, and in one week a winner is randomly selected from the comments.

Personally, I find myself swayed at least a little bit when it comes to awards like this, in terms of my wine book purchasing decisions. I suppose that a part of me figures, Hey, if some people took the time to judge this thing against its peers and say it was good, it’s probably pretty darn good – but all-in-all, when it come to wine book buying, I probably put more weight into jacket testimonials (especially when they’re written by people that I know and respect). So the question I’ve got to get our comentarios del blog de ​​discusión started is this:

Do awards factor into your wine book-buying decisions? Or are they like most wine competition medals (i.e., kinda meaningless)?

My thoughts on all of the non-top-three-listed finalists’ books are below after the jump. I need to preface this by saying that these books are all worthy additions to the English-language wine book lexicon; they just didn’t make my top three for the Georges Duboeuf award based on the judging criteria. That competition was stiffer than the graphite neck on those headless Steinberger basses that Geddy Lee used in the `80s, so not making the cut shouldn’t be treated as a slight; in fact, simply being included in the list of finalists for this year’s award is a nod to the quality level of all of these books. Now that I think about it, I might be getting in trouble by listing these finalists, but technically no one involved in the awards has said that I can’t list them… so what the hell, here we go!

Ron Saikowski { My WINE WALK Article on the same subject had several predictions which I believe will happen. First, mechanical grape harvesting will be way harvesting will... } – Dec 07, 11:21 AM

1WineDude { I've received some social media comments that under Trump, US citizens will have more expendable income with which they could buy more wine. This is... } – Dec 07, 7:32 AM

1WineDude { Michael, I think that's a bit of an overkill of a comparison, though a humorous one :). } – Dec 06, 2:45 PM

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